Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa talks about his involvement in the 2008 Metrolink train crash. A memorial observance and rail safety exhibit to remember the 25 people who lost their lives and the more than 100 who were injured in the crash with a Union Pacific train was Wednesday at Union Station in Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Claudia Souser reads the names of 25 people, including her husband Doyle Souser, as her daughters Kelsey and Mackenzie Souser ring the bell from that Metrolink train in honor of the 25 people who lost their lives in the Chatsworth Metrolink crash. A memorial observance and rail safety exhibit to remember the 25 people who lost their lives and the more than 100 who were injured in the crash with a Union Pacific train was Wednesday at Union Station in Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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California Transportation Commissioner Yvonne Burke hugs Claudia Souser who lost her husband Doyle Souser, in the 2008 Metrolink train crash. A memorial observance and rail safety exhibit to remember the 25 people who lost their lives and the more than 100 who were injured in the crash with a Union Pacific train was Wednesday at Union Station in Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

A memorial observance and rail safety exhibit to remember the 25 people who lost their lives and the more than 100 who were injured in the crash with a Union Pacific train was Wednesday at Union Station in Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Kelsey and Mackenzie Souser who lost their father, Doyle Souser, in the the 2008 Metrolink crash in chatsworth, ring the bell from that Metrolink train in honor of the 25 people who lost their lives in the Chatsworth crash. A memorial observance and rail safety exhibit to remember the 25 people who lost their lives and the more than 100 who were injured in the crash with a Union Pacific train was Wednesday at Union Station in Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Metrolink Vice-Chair Brian Humphrey speaks at a memorial event for the 2008 Metrolink train crash in Chatsworth. A memorial observance and rail safety exhibit to remember the 25 people who lost their lives and the more than 100 who were injured in the crash with a Union Pacific train was Wednesday at Union Station in Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Los Angeles County Supervisor and Metrolink Director Kathryn Barger leaves a message at the train safety exhibit at Union Station in Los Angeles. A memorial observance and rail safety exhibit to remember the 25 people who lost their lives and the more than 100 who were injured in the crash with a Union Pacific train was Wednesday at Union Station in Los Angeles. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

The daughters of Doyle Souser, a Camarillo man among those killed when the passenger train collided head-on with a freight train on the border of Stoney Point Park, rang a bell 25 times as their mother, Claudia, read the name of each victim.

The bell, usually on display at Metrolink’s Pomona dispatch center as a reminder, was from that train.

“I don’t know many of you, I don’t know your story,” Claudia Souser said, speaking to two dozen other family members. “But the emotions we’ve shared are similar.

“We’ve all had to deal with an empty chair and empty bed, an empty room. We think, ‘What would life have been like if this hadn’t happened.’ “

Along with the 25 killed, more than 100 others were injured in the accident on Sept. 12, 2008, the worst train collision in recent California history.

Metrolink hosted the remembrance on the north patio of the downtown Los Angeles train station, steps from where officials unveiled a plaque commemorating the crash and its victims.

Robert Hammersley and his wife were among the family members present at the event. As official after official spoke, the couple stood off to the side, away from where dozens of others were seated, holding hands.

Hammersley’s brother, Michael, who worked for the city of Los Angeles for years in different roles, was killed in the crash. Tears flowing, Hammersley, a Santa Paula resident, said he and wife were driving to Disneyland that Friday afternoon. He remembered driving past traffic backed up on the 118 Freeway, and heard there was a train derailment.

He had no idea his brother was one of the victims, until his brother Tim called saying Michael was missing.

Robert Hammersley, a veteran of one tour each in Iraq and Afghanistan with the U.S. National Guard, he had returned home on leave that weekend to spend a few days with his wife and family. He said the shock of his brother’s death was devastating.

“Our family believed I was the one in harms’ way, not him,” he said.

He also remembered his brother as a quiet man with a passion for science fiction movies. For his funeral, he and his other brothers loaded up in a pick-up truck one of Michael’s prized pieces of Star Wars memorabilia — a full-sized replica of Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

As children growing up in Simi Valley, Hammersley said he remembered his brother riding his 10-speed bicycle home, “blaring the Star Wars soundtrack.”

During the memorial, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, choking up, said he remembered having to tell “a mother and father that their child wouldn’t be coming home.”

Villaraigosa and others reflected on the carnage of the accident, between that Metrolink train with three coaches and a Union Pacific freight train. Federal investigators determined the cause of the crash was a contracted engineer operating the Metrolink who missed a red signal while texting on his cell phone.

In the years after the crash, Metrolink officials said they worked to make the train system the safest in the country. Several spoke about becoming the first railway in the country to adopt positive train control, a computerized system that tracks trains’ locations to prevent collisions.

“Each and every day you have been in the minds of people at Metrolink,” Keith Millhouse, a former chairman of the rail agency, said to the families. “You were the inspiration for these changes. People you don’t know have suffered, grieving for your families.”

Other Metrolink officials on Wednesday said the crash spurred them to push for changes so sweeping that they lost friends in the rail industry who opposed what they were doing.

Art Leahy, Metrolink’s current CEO and a former executive for Los Angeles Metro, said others in the industry wouldn’t talk to him for years while the fight over positive train control raged.

“It was Metro and Metrolink alone, against everyone,” Leahy said.

After the memorial, Claudia Souser and her daughter Kelsey said 10 years after, the crash no longer remains at the front of their minds like it once did. Now, they’re left thinking about their husband and father’s absence.

“I just miss my husband,” she said.

Kelsey was a college student at the time of the crash; she’s now about to turn 30. More than anything, she misses having her father there for advice.

At 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Los Angeles Councilman Mitch Englander, who represents Chatsworth and was another public official who personally responded to the crash site in 2008, hosted another memorial at a ranch in the neighborhood in the shadow of Stoney Point Park.

Traffic snaked along Topanga Canyon Boulevard as drivers stopped to look at a giant American flag police and fire officials put on display outside the event.

At 4:22 p.m., the exact time of the crash, bells at a nearby church played.

Joshua Cain is a crime and public safety reporter for the Southern California News Group, based at the L.A. Daily News in Woodland Hills. He has worked for SCNG since 2016, previously as a digital news editor in the San Gabriel Valley, helping cover breaking news, crime and local politics.